Hey, everyone. Sinix here.
It's time for another another anatomy quick tips.
Today, we'll be focusing on
the beacon of honesty that is the hips.
Yes, that will include some butts,
and some thighs, and all sorts of salacious curves.
Don't get too mesmerized, though,
hips are actually the most important cornerstone
for making good poses and gestures.
As always, if you're new to anatomy quicktips,
these videos are designed to offer
a shorthand anatomy for design and illustration purposes,
more so than fine art.
So, bare in mind, there will be a focus
on simplification and stylization.
In that spirit, every single thing you'll see in this video
was done without ever looking at reference,
so, please, excuse any wobbles inaccuracy.
Alright, let's get in there and bake some cakes.
Starting off with structure--
the skeletal side of things can seem fairly complex.
The pelvic bones have all sorts of movements and shapes,
but, luckily, most of that is fairly hidden.
So, we can skip to just the important parts.
The overall feeling can be looked at as something like a bowl
that holds a bunch of your lower internal organs.
The large upper sides of that bowl
are what I might commonly refer to as the hip bone,
technically, the iliac crest.
While the connection of the femur into the pelvis,
and, specifically, that part sticking out to the side--
the greater trochanter,
is what I will commonly just call the hip joint.
So, hip bone and hip joint,
AKA iliac crest and greater trochanter.
That's all we really care about for our purposes,
and, for even greater simplicity,
we're really just going to be using
the most forward angle of the iliac crest
as our de facto hip bone.
Moving on to muscles,
we don't need to stress out over too many names,
but we can fill in that gap on the side
between our hip bones and hip joints
with some tensor fasciae muscles.
Of course, the quad muscles are quite important;
some connect straight to the femur,
but the most superficial parts of the rectus femoris
come all the way up to that front of the hip bone.
And, don't stress out over these complex names,
you don't need to know them,
they're just for reference purposes.
Now, on the inner thigh area,
we have some other muscles and adductors
that form a different flow of movement
toward the center of the pelvis.
These can be more visible or less visible
depending on angles and movements.
Altogether, these give us enough substance
to draw what we need to draw.
On the back side of things,
of course, we mostly have to worry about the butt.
You might be aware of the gluteus maximus
as the main muscle that makes up the butt,
but let's not forget about the gluteus medius at the top,
which does swoop in and add a lot of subtle shape
toward the top of the butt.
Back to the gluteus maximus,
you can notice how it swings outward
towards the lateral muscles on the legs
and, stretching downward from under that muscle,
you get the hamstrings and some other minor muscle groups.
We can also take note of how
the gluteus maximus and medius muscles
can be flexed in order to form a dimple shape
on the side of the butt.
Overall, that might feel like a lot
of anatomical stuff to keep track of,
but, luckily, I'm going to break down
some very simple reductions
that will make it all a lot easier.
The starting point for everything
will be the classic Superman underwear.
These undies will represent
our hip structure in most situations.
Practice drawing them comfortably
from various subtle angles.
The hip joints are actually just going
to be visualized as two floating dots,
level with the bottom of our undies,
but even further off to each side.
Now, translating this into a side view can be tricky.
If we just do a pure side view of the undies,
it gives us some useful information,
but still feels a bit lacking.
How can we make this more useful
and have it include the butt?
Well, we're going to introduce another shape for this side view.
Looks a bit like a stubby cannon,
but we're going to call it the "tilted pot."
The flat front side of that pot will represent the hip bone,
and, of course, the rounded side is the butt.
Using both the undies and the tilted pot together
will give us everything we need to build
all sorts of good poses.
Anyway, let's focus on just the front view a bit more.
You should try to develop
a comfortable sense of subtle variety
with the pentagonal undies shape.
You can have a set baseline that you like,
and then try to make a slightly more narrow one or wider one.
Notice how the wider version tends
to slope more outward from the top.
That sloping can continue outward
to get wider set hip joint indicators as well.
Those floating dots.
If I add some more underwear shapes below this,
we can also talk about the variety in waistlines.
This doesn't require you to do anything different with the hips,
but it's worth practicing different sizes of waistlines as well.
Starting from a simple one
that is basically the same width as the hips,
you can exaggerate how the obliques are shaped
in relationship to the hips
by adding some quick inward curving lines
that make the whole abdominal area
feel like it's resting on the hip structure.
Alternately, if we want to have a very slim waistline,
we can lead from the hips upward and inward
with a sloping line that connects towards a narrower ribcage.
For a larger gut, we can just allow the obliques
to rest with a lot more mass and weight
on top of those hips.
A classic muffin-top formation.
The big thing you might start realizing
is that our underwear shape
is not going to be visible in the end.
What does that mean?
It means we are actually doing something
I almost never do in these videos--
construction.
Yes, you might know I generally hate construction.
Why?
Because it usually leads to less creative and stylized drawings.
But, in this case, I've always found that starting poses
with a quick indication of ribs and hips
actually leads to more stylized and fun shapes
that you might not try otherwise.
This will be very important
when we get to poses in a future video.
Alright, so we can hopefully add abdominal areas to our hips,
but what about on the other side with the thighs?
Let's do a few more quick mockups.
We'll try to make one of them a bit thicker,
one a bit more muscular,
and one a bit more neutral.
We can even add some contour lines
to really help express the forms of the thighs.
On our thicker version,
we're going to store a lot more fat deposits around the hips,
which means less muscle definition
and a stronger rounding of all the shapes.
The muscles that drive the inner thigh
up towards the center of the pelvis
are going to feel less noticeable,
and even the quad muscles will take a backseat
to the buildup of fat around the hip joints and upper thighs.
Notice how small that little "S" curve movement gets.
The muscular version is going to play off the quads a lot.
The muscle body of the quads
is much lower on the thigh.
And, without many fat deposits,
this is going to make everything around the hip joints
feel much more narrow and angular.
This will lead you toward a much more stronger
and noticeable "S" curve that goes further down the leg.
Finally, on our neutral test subject,
we can just keep the mass low everywhere.
Not much muscle and not much fat.
This just leads to less movement on both sides
and a very subtle and simplified curve in the thighs.
Let's through in some more practice from the side view.
We can start will all of our tilted pots--
some bigger and some a little narrower.
Adding in the side view of our undies shape next,
the key is to make sure it sticks out
further forward than our tilted pot.
Obviously, with a bigger tilted pot,
aka a bigger butt,
you can just let that carry a bit more weight behind the hips.
Of course, we're supposed to be mentioning the thighs,
so make sure the thighs feel like
they're flowing naturally off the front corner
of the tilted pot and the lower back of it as well.
Getting good at making quick little "S" curve movements
will be essential to making all
of your anatomy drawings look better,
so practice leading into them quickly
and getting a smooth curve out.
I feel like I'm making everyone far too caked up,
so let's chill out a bit,
and make a couple smaller butts for variety.
Generally, a smaller butt can have more
of an obvious dimple formed by the muscles.
You can also go full pancake mode,
and make everything much more angular,
maybe an extra crease or two under the butt
for maximum sag.
You're really trying to be more down-to-earth.
Before I ever did anatomy quick tips,
I did have a video on drawing butts specifically,
so I'll sum that up best I can.
We'll go for a baseline butt on the left,
an exaggeratedly small hank hill butt in the middle,
and full on Pixar mom on the right.
Most of this is just giving a different view
on what I mentioned moments ago:
small butts having more angles, dimples, and creases,
while a larger butt is just more simplified and round.
Do, however, pay attention to the fact
that the butt mass is not the widest part,
and they should always feel like they
are resolving themselves
long before the hip joints on the outer sides.
You probably won't see the clear outer edge of the butt, though,
because the crease under the butt
tends to taper off relatively fast
as the gluteus maximus connects downward
and outward toward the side of the leg.
But, I think it can be helpful to draw in the muscle body
as the shape that is inside of that wider hip structure.
Anyway, the crease under the butt
does move and change a lot with weight;
it will certainly never extend all the way
out towards the sides,
but it will become a lot notable and longer
as weight is shifted onto that side of the body.
It will even feel like a much flatter line
that will just follow the contour of the leg
as it carries more weight.
I'll just throw in a silly little chart
of butt cheek creases over here on the left side.
I think that's enough of our reductions and simplifications,
so let's mention some of the main types of movement
you may have to demonstrate with the hip area.
The main one, and by far the most
important one for your entire art journey,
is going to be pelvic tilt.
Understanding pelvic tilt is essential
for making stylized poses and dynamic characters.
Going back to our tilted pot shape,
the more tilted that pot is,
the more pelvic tilt you will have.
And, generally, this is how you hyper stylize
the more masculine or more feminine traits
of any character.
Since I didn't visually demonstrate it as clearly earlier,
first, let's make sure that the front of our legs and thighs
connects to to the front corner of our tilted pot.
Once again, a very controlled "S" curve is great for this.
Next, we can do an "S" curve for the back of the leg,
either shallower or curvier depending on our goals.
And, after adding a clear line for the butt,
we can also follow our imaginary underwear shape
to round out both the waist and the lower abdomen.
For the record, we're keeping everything all ages,
so there won't be any genitalia,
but it is still important to have some level of a pubic mound
in both male and female anatomy.
How visible that may be is going
to be affected by pelvic tilt,
so keep that in mind.
Of course, the spinal curvature in the lower back
is also greatly affected by the pelvic tilt
as the spine still needs to flow into the pelvic tailbone.
So, pelvic tilt plays a big part in this side view of the body.
But, sometimes, people forget how important
it is for the front view as well.
I'm going to try and make the same exact hips twice:
one with no pelvic tilt in the pose
and one with extreme pelvic tilt.
As things tilt forward,
the pentagonal undies is going to be
much more squished vertically,
which will result in it feeling much more
widened horizontally by comparison.
Pelvic tilt is, therefore, going to give the whole pose
a much more feminine feel
by making the hips look curvier.
The "S" curve on the inner thighs
also gets tucked up behind the pelvis,
making any gap between the thighs
feel widest at the top instead of lower down.
From the back view, it's the exact same effect--
everything will look wider and curvier,
resulting in an exaggerated feminine look.
With this all in mind,
you should feel much more capable of exaggerating
the gender expression of any character pose.
To move on from this,
we can also explore some other types
of movements that involve the legs.
While legs might might move a lot,
the hip structures won't be doing too much.
And that's great because it gives us
a good structure to work off of.
So, even if I lift up a leg,
the tilted pot will basically stay the same.
And, I can use the front angle of it
to, once again, build a sharp "S" curve off of.
Same thing for the back side of the leg connecting to the butt,
but, now, I can have the mass of the leg
drag that curve downward from the butt with gravity,
giving the whole thigh a greater feeling of mass.
If we saw this from the other side,
it would be fairly similar,
although, I'm a big fan of using a single line
on the inner thigh to imply some insertion point
for the adductor muscles.
Speaking of those adductor muscles,
we can get a much clearer look at them
if we put the legs in a much wider stance.
The curves on both sides of the thighs
are still based on the same connections as the side views,
but a quick tapering line for the adductors
makes it very readable.
Any pose we can think of now
will just be a combination of all the information
already given in this video.
We can draw from the back three-fourths with a leg being raised,
and all the connections should hold up.
In this case, we also need to make sure
to implement what we learned
about showing how weight distribution
affects the crease under the butt.
Even in a more extreme pose
where the leg is being lifted behind,
this just requires angling our tilted pot so far
that it would be spilling its contents on the ground,
but all of the other connections and concepts
are, once again, the same.
I think we're almost ready;
all information has been distilled and delivered.
Let's just make sure we avoid some of the most common mistakes.
We definitely don't want to draw cheeks
that have lines going upward on the sides,
as they will appear saggy and awkward
with our knowledge of how the gluteus maximus
resolves itself toward the outside side of the leg.
We also want to make sure we don't forget any important structures,
such as the abdomen actually having mass
or the hip bones being the highest connection point for the legs.
Speaking of highest connections,
let's make sure our butts don't slide
they way up to our lower back.
But, really, a lot of these mistakes
usually just come from having some childish iconography
of round butts stored in our brains,
so try to let 3D form become your new iconography.
Alright, now you're set and can have as much fun as you want
drawing hips from all sorts of angles and all sorts of poses.
I've already drawn so many hips from imagination in this video,
but it hasn't become any less fun,
so let's do one more page of various poses and angles.
This part is more for fun than education,
so I'm just focused on my tempo and line energy.
Some of these are definitely exploring
the more stylized side of things,
and you probably won't see references
quite like these in real life,
but, with enough of our sprinkles of knowledge,
we can have fun with anatomy
that feels somewhat believable,
but is pretty wild in the actual proportions.
i know I tend to stylize the legs very widely set,
so these thigh gaps are a bit ridiculous,
but it does make it more fun to balance the poses
and see more crazy silhouette shapes.
Alright, I did fiddle around with
the actual layout and actual positioning of this page,
but I think we're ready to paint.
Our normal starting point still applies,
so I will be lightening the line art
into a more orange-ish tone and setting it to multiply.
The background continues to have that iconic chalkboard color,
which will help us pick more balanced colors for this skin tones.
Filling in the solid tones cleanly on a new layer
is a boring step, but saves tons of time in the long run
by letting you lock transparency
and never have to worry about edges until the very end.
By far, the biggest decision I had to make
was how to handle rendering the pelvic area.
Just having skin tones alone can make this
feel very lewd very fast.
Just adding black modesty underwear
can feel very lewd if it's too skimpy.
So, figuring out the right balance in this was a bit tricky.
I think what I got should work, though.
Hopefully, it strikes the right educational balance
and keeps the Demon of "Itize" from attacking.
The next step is a subtle amount
of airbrush gradiation on each skin tone,
lightening areas that seldom get exposed to the sun
and potentially adding more reddish tones
to various other parts.
At this point, things will be deviating
from previous paintings a bit.
I decided to go with a hyper-smooth
and more cleaner rendering style this time.
All of the earliest anatomy quick tips were very painterly,
so this offers a bit of contrast to that.
The easiest way to go about this
is to rely on our lock transparency
and establish a simple cylindrical shading
on both the torso and each leg.
Heavy airbrushing around all of the edges
with a slightly deeper and, once again, reddish tone
will make the forms feel like they're turning away
from the light source.
Next, you can hit the tops of these forms
with a bit more highlight.
Usually, I establish this with just a minimal amount of strokes
with a big hard-edged round brush,
and then a bit more airbrushing when needed.
Next comes the hard edges,
so if they are any cast shadows,
you can just add those in,
potentially darkening up the edge of the shadow
to imply some bounced light hitting inside of the shadow.
All of these additional anatomical details and plane changes
can be hinted at by using hard edges
where any of those planes run into one another,
and then just softly gradiate away from that edge.
It's always nicer if your light source leans a little bit more
a little bit more toward one side of the drawing or the other.
Lastly, the underwear does need a bit of form as well,
but we'll imply that it's slightly less
reflected material than skin
and just shrink the contrast range of values
down to be more subtle.
This painting technique is definitely more suited
toward pinup aesthetics and stylized anime,
as it gives everything a very silky, smooth appearance.
In other styles, I would disregard the line art much sooner,
but with this technique, you can mostly leave it in
and still get a presentable look.
One important thing to remember
is that you will need to be adding the edges and details
into areas of heavy gradiation,
which means that you'll need to selectively pick your colors
for anatomical colors based on the specific location
you're at in the overall gradiation.
You don't want to use the same color for form light
in a brighter area as you do in a darker area.
Luckily, the large sweeping form gradiations
that you do at the start
will give you enough of a palette to constantly pick from,
so avoid picking values that fall outside
of that initially established gradiation.
Everything is pretty straightforward from here.
Try to notice how often I seek to do form details
and as few strokes as possible.
Sometimes, just a single softening stroke of the stylus
is all you need to define an entire form.
Of course, the darkest skin tone is probably the most to paint,
as you get to bring in more focus on the color
of the primary light and the bounced light.
It's really too bad that most of the world's indoor spaces
are dominated by just Eurocentric lighting.
I think we would all be better painters
if indoor lighting was a bit less standardized.
Anyway, as things wind down,
I did decide to paint out the line work a bit
so I can be a bit more painterly with the strokes.
I do enjoy playing around with that overall ratio
of smooth rendering versus painterly rendering.
If you can do both comfortably,
it opens up a lot of freedom
for deciding the mixture you want to use
in any specific painting.
It's just going to be a bit of minor touch ups from here on out,
so I'm just going to skip ahead to the finished result.
It's pretty good, but I can't resist
having just a bit of fun with rim lighting as well,
so I'll pop that on,
and, voila, I'd say we're done.
Another anatomy quick tips in the archives.
Now, you can always get more in depth
with your anatomical details,
but as far as hips go, this should all be enough
to get you into the thrust of things.
So, hopefully, you enjoyed this video
and learned something fun.
I do want to thank you all for watching this video.
The positivity of this community has always been great.
And, finally, one last big thank you to the Patreon supporters
that allow me to do these videos
without having to waste any time on boring sponsors or ads.
You guys are wonderful.
Alright, see you, everyone.